Speaking Plainly

by Chris Ott

Metaphysics is the area of philosophy that deals with problems that the human brain wasn't really created to understand. When we were cavemen and our brains were evolving, we were dealing with physical objects like food and water, sticks and stones. So we were born into this world adapted to a harsh physical world, making objects and counting beads, not for the fine subtleties of abstract ideas.

So there is nothing so natural as having trouble with metaphysics for an ordinary man.

But just as there are finer thoughts than merely counting beads, there are finer faculties latent within man that, in the course of time, can gradually be unlocked and put to use. These finer faculties do not evolve in us in the same way that the rougher sensibilities we adopted to cope with physical life did, but rather these finer faculties were always dormant. It is not by evolution, but by wearing away of the rougher faculties that these finer faculties are revealed. And generally this is a slow process of wearing away of veils to expose the higher intuitions.

Still, if a person is interested and willing, is sincere and determined, and above all is honest with himself, the unlocking of these higher faculties can occur more quickly to some degree, even if the seeker is very new to the path. For to the degree of honesty, determination, and concentration, maturation can be fast or slow.

To this end, of explaining what metaphysics is and giving a boost to the seeker that is unfamiliar with such issues and is perhaps entirely lost or confused by them, I have devised what I hope is an introduction that is more simple without being simplistic.

We begin by isolating in our thinking what we mean by physical stuff.

To make it very simple, we can say that physical stuff is stuff we can put in a jar.

We can put rocks in a jar. We can grind up big objects and put the grindings in several jars. We could even close up a jar and trap air in it. We could put anything in a jar so long as we found a big enough jar.

But we can't put freedom in a jar. It's not that kind of thing. We can't put happiness in a jar. We can't put seeing in a jar.

These things that we can't put in a jar are the kinds of things that metaphysicians think about.

Now, because the ordinary human brain we all have was evolved to deal mostly with physical things that can fit in a jar, when we try to think about things that aren't physical we are very often prone to try to think of those things LIKE they were things we could fit in a jar. As silly as this sounds it is really a very important point to get hold of. Consider this quote by Meher Baba where he is expressing the same point in a little bit different context.

If the mind tries to understand the spirit independently of the heart, it is bound to use analogues from the material world. (Discourses, 1967 edition, The Avenues to Understanding, p136)

An example of applying gross analogues where they don’t belong is a person who thinks his seeing comes out of his eyes and lands

on objects it sees – like old comic strips of Superman’s heat vision. Such a person is making the mistake of imagining seeing like it's air or water. That's called an "analogue." He's thinking of something nonphysical – seeing – as if it's "analogous" to physical stuff. That's a problem. I can’t overemphasize how common such a problem in thinking is, or how much it impedes progress.

Meher Baba was not only very smart and knew everything, but he was also very considerate of where people are and how they think. He knew their limitations but also wanted them to progress beyond these limits. He knew how people think, so he took the things he wanted to communicate and he explained them in a way that people could just barely get if they really tried, even with their very physical kind of thinking.

So to make metaphysical things clear enough for people to focus on in order to progress, he used simple analogues that his devotees could picture, like drops and an Ocean, to explain issues of spirit and Existence.

But more privately, when Baba wanted to take certain people deeper into his gnosis, if they were duly prepared as his mandali were, he used finer, somewhat less physical, analogues – but still things from their experience they could relate to. So, for instance, in the Infinite Intelligence Notebooks taken from more private discourses given directly to his early disciples, Baba speaks about experience more like it is, using the word “oopabhog (meaning enjoyment or taking the experience of),” and sanskaras more as they are – analogous to glasses on the eye.

So the seeing of the shadow or the experiencing of the universe is done by his eye according to the glasses, i.e. subtle and gross forms, that his eye receives; and these glasses are produced opposite the eye according to the past impressions attached on the eye. (Infinite Intelligence)

Were Baba to use no analogies at all from our experience, we wouldn't have a clue what he meant.

Now, one of the reasons my own writing in the past was difficult to understand is that I often write in finer analogues or no analogues from the physical world at all. So, for instance, I will speak of perceptual schemata (ways of organizing experience) or of the process of psychological apperception, and I will give examples of sensory processes at work in experience that the reader can discover in his experience by examining its workings, but few or no analogies.

Nothing appears to be more difficult than when I talk about perception, for perception is something I don’t understand in a discursive linguistic way, but is rather intimately familiar to me in a way I can’t easily articulate. Sometimes I ask the reader to notice his seeing. But this is really confusing for some readers because people aren't sure if I mean the things they see like the things in the room they are in, or something else. So I explain I don't mean the impression they experience of things in the room. That, I explain, is the image or the percept. I mean the actual act of seeing like a verb. I have learned through trials that it is hard for many people, but not all, to hold their perception in their thoughts this way. As I have said, they are used to thinking of things like rocks and water and not at all designed by nature to think about the act of seeing the rocks, divorced from the rocks.

So that's what's so hard about much of my writing. It's the subject matter, not the language. Or this is what I now suspect.

So now that I've explained all this, the reader ought to be more than prepared for me to explain some of my most basic ideas – in very broad terms – in simple words.

There really is only perception.

There isn't even someone doing the perceiving.

If there is a seer, it is seeing itself.

If there is something seen it is the result of the act of seeing – and is nondifferent from the seeing itself.

Now if there is only perception, then it is no contradiction to assume that there are ways of perceiving. Just as, if there were only running, there would be no contradiction in saying there are ways of running.

I discern from reading Baba’s writing that these ways of perceiving (sanskaras) evolve and collect to produce an image.

This evolution of ways of perceiving (sanskaras) happens first in perception in its undifferentiated state of course. For by what manner of perception would it have to be divided?

Now, as this undifferentiated state of perception evolves, it gradually gives rise to individual states of perception called atmas, which are really only apparent states in the undifferentiated, caused by the accumulated ways of perceiving (sanskaras).

So, we take this always from the Beginning and move forward to see how this miracle of the self’s apparent emergence takes place.

First, time evolves in perception. Time is a way of perceiving. Seeing temporally causes things to be seen temporally.

Next is space. Space is a way of perceiving. Seeing spatially causes things to be seen spatially (with extension).

All natural laws are relations of space and time.

So now, relations of space and time evolve as new ways of seeing – and this is called the rise of natural laws.

Natural laws are ways of perceiving – laws of perception.

For example, seen through the law of gravity, things will be seen to fall.

These laws of seeing evolved even before there were any ‘things’ to be governed by them, e.g. gravity evolved as a way of seeing before there was anything to be seen falling.

So if the laws of nature are laws of perception, note the enormous implication:

Scientists can describe absolutely EVERYTHING about physical objects and their motions in terms of natural laws. This is not an exaggeration.

So when it is said that the natural laws are really laws of perceiving, nothing is left out of this account of physical things seen.

So speaking truly – all that is (physically) is seeing. And all that is ever happening (physically) is seeing and ways of seeing.

All living forms are reducible to natural laws, not simply governed by them. Thus arises in physical evolution the individual creatures.

The creature, i.e. the organism, is then the lens through which perception begins to perceive as an individual.

The brain and nerves of the organism evolve further. As it evolves more is seen, heard, smelt. Soon thinking evolves via ways of seeing. Seeing signs as symbols gives rise to words. Seeing objects through words gives rise to judgments, etc.

So the mental events also are caused by ways of perceiving.

For example, a man seeing a man through the schema of rich and poor, based on learned customs of dress and manner, he will see the man as rich or poor.

Now finally man finds himself in the world of his experience, when all the while his is nothing but Undifferentiated Perception that never went anywhere since it was never in space – but rather produced space in the act of seeing spatially. Perception never really moved forward in time, because it wasn’t in time – but produced time in the act of seeing temporally. Perception was never really conditioned by the laws of nature, because Perception produced the laws of nature by seeing in terms of them. Perception was never really a thought because Perception produced thought in the act of seeing things as signs symbolically. Perception was never a thing, because perception produced things in the act of seeing in terms of name and form.

This is consistent with Meher Baba’s principle book God Speaks. Creation is contained in the Universal Mind and is sustained by God seeing it. In jivatma (incarnate man) state, God sees the world as an individual, and this seeing sustains the world for him. In Paramatma (God) state, God, focused upon God, would see God, but being seeing itself there is nothing for God to perceive, but only Be. He knows everything for there is nothing but Himself to know, and he is formless and colorless. So what is there to know? What is there to see? He simply is. All that is apparently seen and known in illusion by man or the Universal Mind is the result of Maya (trickery of evolving imagination).

I'll repeat my main thought.

All that is is seeing and ways of seeing.

That’s it.

Remove the obstructions to seeing, the schemata of seeing, the sanskaras, and you see clear – you see your Real Self – by which you see nothing at all. You simply ARE.

Now this might frighten someone. But Baba tells us that this state is a state of Bliss and equipoise, and not annihilation of Consciousness. Thus Bliss experiences itself as Bliss. When delusion is removed, suffering is removed. When suffering is removed, the Bliss that was all along there, but not experienced for it was latent in Unconsciousness, is revealed and never lost.

This notion of the endgame of Creation being the event where God overcomes delusional separation from Himself is the ancient perennial knowledge you will find told in numerous ways in all mystical traditions. In the West it was expressed by the German philosopher Georg Hegel in the expression Spirit meets Spirit.

It is formulated in so many ways, and the many ways it is formulated can confuse people and make them think there are many stories. There is one story told in many ways, from many angles.

I like my formulation because I think it is accessible to our modern seeing-oriented screen-loving civilization. I even find meaning in the fact that so many of Meher Baba’s closest disciples were artists and screen artists. I also take heart that my book The Evolution of Perception & the Cosmology of Substance (2004) came out before I read the analogies in Infinite Intelligence (2005). This gives me hope I am doing some good for someone.

Just so I wouldn't die and leave my daughter not knowing what her Dad was doing – because it could be pretty hard to determine if you watched me – I asked her to memorize these words: "The laws of nature are laws of perception – seeing and ways of seeing." In a real sense, it’s really that simple. I hope I’m right. How can I know until I have the experience of Reality? But these thoughts encourage me to believe there is a Reality.

To make this idea that the laws of nature are laws of perception work brilliantly to explain experience accurately and completely as we receive it, it was important to propose an explanation for how there can be the objective world and at the same time our own individual experience of it, which is a little different for each person. It was very important to explain this. Even materialism cannot explain this. It just waits for an explanation.

To do this it was imperative to formulate the problem perfectly – explaining why there are two kinds of qualities we observe when we look at things. There are facts that are the same for everyone like relative measure, geometry, and natural laws, and things that are a little different for everyone such as how things feel, taste, and how we judge them. We had to explain how there were both "objective" facts and "subjective" facts.

This involved explaining how the two kinds of facts evolved, one from the other.

To explain this I posited a process that I now think is more easily understood from studying diagrams than words. I myself studied the central charts in God Speaks for years. I have the main chart framed in my living room and have literally studied it.

Explaining the chart above: The objective facts (same for everyone who measures them) are in the singular Universal Mind, while the subjective facts (more or less unique for each percipient who looks at them) are in the individual minds. The individual minds are contained in the Universal Mind, accounting for the fact that the objective and subjective experience are compossible and explaining why the individual has access to both – the subjective upon looking, the objective if he checks closer and thinks.

Another way to say this, and more accurate also, is that the individual minds are conditioned individually, and the Universal Mind is conditioned in a single stable way by the laws of nature. Since all individual minds are contained in the Universal Mind (or more accurately supervene upon the natural laws contained in the Universal Mind), they share the conditioning of the Universal Mind – thus each individual continues to see a persistent and stable objective world. But they do not share their individual conditioning (unless they do so by cultural accident). This then accounts for the apparent objective (stable) – subjective (relative) distinction found in ordinary human experience.

There are many fascinating implications to all of this. One of the most interesting is that it turns out to be an original idea. No one at Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, or Oxford has thought of this. The reason I know that is that three of my professors were from Harvard, one was from Stanford, one from Cambridge, and a friend studied philosophy at Oxford. Plus I studied philosophy books written at all these places. There's no such thing as Arkansas philosophy, so I didn't have much choice.

Now when I read Infinite Intelligence I was delighted, though not surprised, to learn that Baba had used some of the same analogies that I did – the movie projector, the projectionist, the lenses of glass signifying the sanskaras or conditioning on the mind. So now I am pretty confident that I am not far off the mark.

But, like I said, this is difficult. If people feel more comfortable with other analogies like the Ocean and drops then they should not worry. Baba gave them too. For all I know my ideas could do people damage by confusing them. So choose what’s right for you using your own discrimination. Baba is perfect. I’m absolutely positive I’m not.

I see twelve hopeful things about this model.

1. Understood properly and in its entirety this idea expressed in my charts and writing gives a lucid account for the evolution and apparent presence of time, space, and the fixed reliable natural laws. Prior to this there was no explanation at all. That's very exciting. When I was twelve years old I buried a time capsule on the Meher Spiritual Center that contained a letter titled “Note to future scientists.” Maybe now I have something to tell them. The time capsule is still there, by the way.

2. This idea explains gravity in a metaphysically simpler way than the General Theory of Relativity and certainly simpler than String Theory. It has ‘less moving parts’ as one kindly reviewer of my book once wrote on Amazon. And metaphysical simplicity, less moving parts, is the criterion science uses for choosing theories. It's called "Occam's Razor." That's exciting too.

3. This idea, when fleshed out as it is in my book, accounts for numerous things that no one could explain before, such as the ontology of mathematics, color perception, the rise of the human psyche etc.

4. As of this writing, the most progressive theory of language was developed by linguist and social philosopher Noam Chomsky. In my book I explain why my own theory of language, which falls naturally out of my idea, actually succeeds in accounting for the rise of language, while Chomsky’s fails to correctly isolate the central issue and thus necessarily fails as an account. That's extremely exciting for linguists.

5. This idea can account for what is called the primary-secondary quality distinction in philosophy without having to propose an unobservable substance like other philosophers have been forced to in the past. This means that the system I propose is (perhaps some would think ironically) less metaphysical than materialism.

6. This idea explains the speed of light without producing paradoxes. Einstein's paradoxes are the cause of scientism, which I argue is one of the six plagues on modern intellectual thought and development.

7. Most important to me, this idea is completely consistent with the teachings of Meher Baba, as well as Advaita Vedanta and Illuminationism.

8. This idea explains everything (both physical and mental objects) without postulating anything new to explain. Materialism, on the other hand, was totally incapable of explaining time, space, natural laws, or human consciousness. It couldn't even explain how matter arises or even what they meant by matter besides “that which is real.” Matter creates a useful model for physical chemistry, but little else. Similarly, Ptolemaic astronomy (the old Earth based solar model) is still useful for nautical navigation. Models ought not be confused with reality.

9. This idea produces a far more elegant and robust theory of money. I show this later on.

10. This theory obviates numerous diffuse other theories, supplanting them with a single unified theory.

11. This theory, as far as it goes, has no loose ends that anyone has been able to determine. It explains every quality of experience, both actual and potential, by explaining it away as a way of perceiving, or perceptual schema, even itself as a theory. The only thing it cannot explain away is the unified perceiver, i.e. God. Yet is does this without making a second zat (reality) outside of God, which would contradict God’s omnipresence. Thus it is completely consistent, if different, as far as I know, with the few mystical schools that Meher Baba upheld without qualification.

12. This idea explains everything while positing nothing. Thus, given Occam's Razor and extrapolating it to its ultimate conclusion, this idea is the ultimate idea. Thus to my mind it must be nearly true.

Now is God really just perception? I don't know. I don't think so. What I gather is that such a view would be closer to Buddhism than Advaita Vedanta.

But perception, something we take for granted everyday though we cannot see it, is the closest thing we can find in our own daily waking lives to what spirit is – if it is not spirit itself. I once wrote that perception is not consciousness but we enjoy our consciousness as perception.

If God is more than his creative and impulsive imagination I have no way to know, but I doubt that He exists apart from his nature. And creative and impulsive imagination, i.e. creating by seeing, is his nature. I think of this impulsive and creative imagination that we enjoy as God’s own. I guess that's like saying I think God is imagination and beyond imagination. He is the imaginer, the imagined, and beyond the distinction. He is incomprehensible, but not as incomprehensible as matter.